Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) rise, transit and set times from your location before it's gone forever

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Rob702Martinez

Zip-Tie Oversight Committee
TRF Supporter
Joined
Dec 30, 2015
Messages
1,371
Reaction score
351
Location
Las Vegas
Last chance to see this one before the year 8600.
Use this site to change your location. It shows you your rise and set times and it's current location. Pretty sure I saw it earlier today around sundown. Other wise it was an odd and very large high altitude plane. Along with a shiny red/white reflective dot, space station maybe, not far behind off to the left.

https://theskylive.com/c2020f3-info
 
Last edited:
Saw it this morning. Could see naked eye, better with binoculars, even thou it was 10 degrees from the streetlight.
cool!
 
This evening Could see in binoculars for sure, naked eye maaaybeee.
Took telescope out but could not find it before descending into haze.
 
We saw it last night (7/17) out here in eastern Montana under a pristine, moonless and inky black sky. We drove out away from some streetlights in the small town I'm staying in. The horizon wasn't dark yet at 10:30 Mountain time but it was about half way between the Big Dipper and the horizon. So by 11:00 it was getting much darker, but still, to see it well, you had to use your night vision and not look directly at it. If it doesn't get brighter as it gets closer to us - it's moving away from the sun as well - I can't imagine seeing it in more densely poulated areas, I know I'd never see it at home. But keep looking, I always reserve the right to be smarter later!
 
I work a night shift on the 23rd. If I'm lucky we will have clear skies and I will try to get a picture of the comet though my NVGs.
 
I saw it on July 15th and 16th after 10:30 PM in Northern Utah with the naked eye, but it is faint. It was below the Big Dipper near the horizon. My Dad's WW II binoculars did help. It was pretty spectacular with 20 x 80 binoculars. I think the peak will be around July 22nd, but it will still be visible into August.
 
@RocketDestroyer there are a lot of stars in that picture, too, a beautiful shot. We aren't that far apart right now, I'm over in Ft. Smith, MT. What time of night was that? May I ask what were you using to photograph it, and aperature, shutter, ISO, if you have them?
 
tom, I used a Canon EOS T5i camera with a 24mm wide angle lens. I used an ISO of 800, an aperture of F4 and each exposure was for 30 seconds. This was made from a stack of 10 images done over about 5 minutes time. You can see star trails caused by the long exposure times on the left hand side of the image. I tried one with the telephoto lens but any exposure over about 2 seconds had too much motion in it to look nice. I wish I could have got out to take some pictures when the comet was brighter. The pictures were taken around midnight MDT.
 
Last edited:
Thanks! I figured you had to have some time exposure in there. Unfortunately for me, I have no tripod with me, plus only a Nikon P610 that won't let me leave the shutter open that long at that ISO, which is weird... maybe they don't want someone burning up the sensor? It's a great snapshot superzoom, but not flexible enough for things like this.

Edited to add:
And so tonight we again had a beautiful clear night and enjoyed both direct visual and telescopic views of NEOWISE. We stayed out later and walked down the lane for complete darkness and I was flabbergasted when my host's sister-in-law was able to capture serveral images with her Iphone! They have promised to send them to me as a keepsake. And the Milky Way was gorgeous again.
 
Last edited:
I was 4 when Halley's Comet was last visible and I remember looking at it with my dad through his binoculars. There's a good chance I could be able to see it again when it comes back too. I also saw Hale-Bopp and it was more impressive. I haven't been about to see this this one yet. Hopefully I can find some clear, dark sky. I don't have the right kind of cameras to get some of the impressive pictures though.
 
I've been skunked the last 2 nights weather-wise. Clear all day and then bad thunderstorms rolling through after sunset. And it looks iffy for tonight according to my Clear Sky Chart. (Link below) There are Clear Sky Charts for observatories, including amateurs like me, all over the US & Canada and we amateur astronomers have found them to be fairly accurate. You can search for charts in your area.

https://www.cleardarksky.com/c/FrtmnFrmObWIkey.html?1
 
@NateB, I don't know if you saw my edited post above, but I was flabbergasted when my host's sister-in-law was able to capture several images with her Iphone! Granted it was the fancy new one with the 3 cameras, but that was a jaw-dropper. And it was closer to what you actually see. Those real pretty ones, though I appreciate them, are time exposures, multiple layered in post processing, and there you do have the fancy DSLR with the expensive lenses, and clock drives on your equitorial mount tripod that's built like the Brooklyn Bridge..
 
Back
Top